Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.

Last spring, as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. [Emphasis mine — RD] The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

No kidding. More:

In building Reddit, a community of thousands of discussion threads, into one of the most frequently visited sites in the world, [doom$day prepper Steve] Huffman has grown aware of the way that technology alters our relations with one another, for better and for worse. He has witnessed how social media can magnify public fear. “It’s easier for people to panic when they’re together,” he said, pointing out that “the Internet has made it easier for people to be together,” yet it also alerts people to emerging risks. Long before the financial crisis became front-page news, early signs appeared in user comments on Reddit. “People were starting to whisper about mortgages. They were worried about student debt. They were worried about debt in general. There was a lot of, ‘This is too good to be true. This doesn’t smell right.’ ” He added, “There’s probably some false positives in there as well, but, in general, I think we’re a pretty good gauge of public sentiment. When we’re talking about a faith-based collapse, you’re going to start to see the chips in the foundation on social media first.”

And:

As public institutions deteriorate, élite anxiety has emerged as a gauge of our national predicament. “Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” [hedge fund manager Robert A.] Johnson asked. “What does that really tell us about our system?” He added, “It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”

So, that’s the Benedict Option of the superrich. It’s not the one anybody else can afford to take, nor, arguably, is it the one that Christians should take, but that’s beside the point. Those with great resources will always take care of themselves, and let’s be honest: if civilization collapsed, all of us would be looking to protect our families too. What’s interesting here is the canary-in-the-coal-mine aspect of this story.

I’m especially interested in the Silicon Valley guy’s statement about the loss of the “healthy founding myth” of a society being a harbinger of its doom. What do you suppose he’s talking about? Christianity? The political principles of the American founding? Or just a general sense that we’re all in this together as a nation?

What the Benedict Option (FAQ here) has in common with this is a sense that we are on very thin civilizational ice, and the time to prepare for things falling apart is now. But there are at least two important differences:

The Benedict Option does not see the collapse as a future event. It sees the collapse as well underway, only now beginning a sharp quickening. What constitutes the collapse is the dissolution of the Christian faith in the West, and with it the loosening of the ties to certain moral and religious beliefs that held us together. “Religion” comes from the Latin word religare, meaning “to bind.” Without a shared religion, we lose our binding. No alternative myth has arisen to replace Christianity, and people in our day seem unwilling to repent and to return to the faith. The Roman historian Livy said, of his society, “We have reached that point where we can neither bear our vices nor the remedies for them.” He wrote this at the beginning of the Christian era, when Roman power was at its apex. Livy saw the rot setting in, however.

The Benedict Option does not say “head for the hills!”, though if one wanted to do that, fine, but don’t think that geographical isolation is going to save your family’s faith. Rather, the Ben Op is a strategy for sheltering in place, and building the internal practices and external institutions that will impart to Christians the ability to successfully resist and ride out the collapse. As with the early church in the face of plague, for most of us, our role is to be present to help others through what is to come. To do so, we have to be training ourselves and building up our communities right now, while there is time. I’m not talking about being a doomsday prepper in terms of building fortified hideaways in the mountains. I’m talking about building spiritual shelters that are both sanctuaries and sources of light for people lost in the darkness — just as Benedictine monasteries were in the chaos of the early Middle Ages.

Still, don’t lose sight of Robert A. Johnson’s point: that those who have made the most money in our society are those who fear its collapse. What does that tell us? In the Osnos piece, there are a couple of voices from among the superrich saying that escape is the wrong idea, that they ought instead to be working to solve the problems among us that cause them to consider escape. I get that, and it’s true to some extent. But at what point does that view become a form of denial? At what point do you recognize that the conditions under which those problems might be solved do not exist? When do you reach what Alasdair MacIntyre called “a crucial turning point”:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead—often not recognising fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.

Say, readers, I’m about to leave for the airport, headed to Washington DC for the next two days, joining a bunch of folks at the Southern Baptist ERLC’s religious liberty summit. The event is off the record, but there will be a number of key people involved in the religious liberty debate present, and I’ll be talking to many of them outside of conference events. I’m sure I can get some on the record, and I’ll report back here. Point is, approving comments is going to be slow going today. I appreciate your patience.

But elite anxiety is not just a gauge of our national predicament. It’s a cause. These are people who have the power and position of societal leaders. They built the plane, they own the plane, and they fly the plane. We are all flying along with them. And they are having serious conversations about bailing out rather than, I don’t know, changing course, preparing for a water landing — anything that suggests a concern for all the other people in the plane as something other than a threat.

Survivalism isn’t new, of course — and the article talks about some of the comical and terrifying antecedents. But there is an enormous difference between self-appointed prophets of doom plying their trade and the leadership of society saying, “I paid for that parachute.”

UPDATE: Hey, look at this: Antonio Garcia-Martinez left this comment:

Since I’m mentioned in the piece, like to clarify some things.

For starters, financially I shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same article with people like Thiel. I’m not even remotely a skrillionaire, having just worked at Facebook (relatively late) for a couple of years.

Secondly, I have no intention of leaving the US, especially during a tumultuous time like now. I have an EU passport by legacy, but I have no intention of using it to flee. The land in question is very much in the US of A.

In fact, I very much resent the truly Silicon Valley affluent (and they do exist, this piece isn’t criticizing a straw man)
who are vowing to leave should Trump’s presidency continue on its present course. For starters, it’s all posturing. My parents were political refugees; exile is traumatizing and awful. This crowd doesn’t have the stomach for it. Secondly, they’re indeed Benedict Arnolds, running when the republic actually needs capable people of means more than ever.

Thirdly, I’m not really such an apocalypse prepper, though the idea did come to mind when I bought the land (as it has to others on the island, most of whom are certainly not techie elites). I’m homesteading a rural property because I love the area, and I take making raw forest livable an interesting personal challenge. As a side benefit, it could be a place to sit out some economic turmoil, but that’s not why I’m doing this. To be blunt, most of these apocalypse bunkers seem like horrible places to be, and I suspect most will sit there expensively gathering dust.

As for the questions about my statement concerning a founding myth: Unlike old European countries with their blood-soaked soils and temples erected to their own cultures (not that they worship in them very much anymore), the US in many ways is founded on a myth. On a myth around equality and justice for all, and a 15-page document providing only the vaguest instructions. We re-write and re-tell that myth with every generation, answering the question “What’s America?” with some improvised but audacious cultural amalgam drawn from all four corners of the world, but united under a sense of common purpose and values. As a society I feel we’ve kind of lost the plot on the sense of unity and purpose. That’s in no small part due to the ‘identity politics’ of the Left, that’s balkanized our society by placing the gripes (both real and imagined) of the few over not just the good of the many, but the very values that griping purports to defend. On this media outlet at least, I imagine I don’t need to drive that point any further. But there’s some more background on the statement.

Lastly, even though I’m kind of being included in the rogues’ gallery (wrongly I’d say), I’m glad the media is holding elites accountable. As I describe in my memoir (mentioned above), Silicon Valley is full of selfish pricks who’d bail on the American Experiment as soon as the going got tough. They don’t deserve much of the praise the business press lavishes on them, and they as a class are rightly paranoid of what society will do to them when the extent of their depredations, both financially and culturally, is fully appreciated.

Thanks for this, especially for your clarification about the waning of the founding myth. I think you’re right about that. I believe that the cultural left has a lot to answer for on that front, but it’s also the case that the economic right does too. American culture has been increasingly individualist — indeed, hyperindividualist — since the end of the Second World War. Technology has also ramped up the dissolution. Antonio, take a look at this essay by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who discussed how in late modernity, we have gone from being pilgrims to being tourists. One can’t blame the fracturing wholly on one political side or the other. I would say that it is baked into the cake of modernity.

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71 Responses to Benedict Option For Skrillionaires

Wow, nice post on Garcia-Martinez’ part. Glad he found this. I may not be the first to point this out, Rod, but I didn’t get a sense at all of the backlash by some of this 1% against escape. I am encouraged by this, even though I regret fellow Detroit Johnson’s prescription of a more statist solution. I am encouraged by those who propose to finance the seeking of solutions on their own, not unlike Rockefeller and Carnegie. I suspect such attempts will go farther than anything the Leviathan could do and after much dithering. Salute to busy Rod for the attention, and to “A” for his clarification.

Just to clear up a misconception (that is rampant). Your school may have switched to Common Core, but the Common Core doesn’t have a social studies component. It is reading, writing, and math. It describes skills that students are expected to master (some, I think, are too early and I don’t know anything about the Math standards since I am licensed for Social Sciences, all of them, and Language Arts). If you have a problem with the history curriculum, don’t blame the common core. That curriculum is being set by your state or local school board. Go do something about it.

Reading this article, the accompanying articles, and the latest update from Garcia-Martinez, I am reminded of Bonhoeffer. In what might have been the most consequential decision of his short life, he forewent the opportunity to live and teach in America, to stay in hostile Germany.

His reasoning was that if he did not participate in the fight for Germany’s soul, he had no right to play any role in its rebuilding.

I think it would be horrible to be surrounded by those fraidy-cats anyway. The opposite of fear is faith. Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Ime, the more excess money people have, the more they’re afraid of losing it. Excess. Which is really weird, but true. They lose their faith instead.

I believe that the cultural left has a lot to answer for on that front, but it’s also the case that the economic right does too.

It’s worth noting that they are mutually dependent upon each other.

The other day I e-mailed you a Freakonomics podcast that notes that in 1970 90% of 30-year-olds were doing better than their parents had economically, and that today that’s below 50%. This statistic has huge impact on things like family formation and community stability.

This economic condition was created by the right, and the left championed its necessary supports: divorce, contraception, abortion and single parenthood.

Ayn Rand extolled the economics of the right, so much so that Paul Ryan used to give her novel to everyone who worked for him, but also sexual promiscuity and abortion to rid oneself of the results.

The right praises her “heroes” and soft-pedals her actual morals, while the left decries her economics but practices her sexual morality.

This is why a Benedict Option is required. Not because of transgenders or homosexuals, not because of identity politics and the justification of racist whites because blacks are racist, too, but because at a very deep level the American deck is stacked against Christ and his Church.

@Major Wooton, re: North Dakota: Our winters are long, but with climate change I’m seeing a trend to milder winters. If you need cool restaurants, though, you’ll have to adjust.

Once the Royal Fork buffet closed in Grand Forks and Fargo, one really had to consider if the end was really nigh. I loved that place when I lived up there, even though eating there tended to give one the trots. If Kroll’s Diner is still open, though, there may just be hope for the future….

@Will Harrington: Common Core doesn’t have a social studies component.

Well, technically, there is a social studies component, it just focuses on reading and research skills with non-fiction and historical sources not content coverage. In other words, if you are a social studies teacher, you are a de facto reading teacher as far as Common Core is concerned. This is not a problem for me since I had figured that out probably 10 years before.

“…the ACTUAL residents of that island – who know the lay of the land, have guns they actually use, and will find themselves cut off from usual supply lines – will have “appropriated” all his nice kit.”

Ha! You are so right. My getaway is on the ancestral homestead in the middle of nowhere in the intermountain west on the patch of ground where I grew up, where I’ve known everybody all my life, and where I am a good absentee citizen for the 11 months a year that I don’t live there.

My grandparents homesteaded the original bit of land around which the other thousands were acquired. To say that my parents were generous, highly respected, humble, and public minded pillars of the community would be an understatement. I have never stopped donating to local churches and charities, and pay all of my bills to local vendors and neighbors who provide services promptly — and take the advice of neighbors humbly when it is offered. I have siblings, nephews and lots of cousins there.

And yet — if I were to ever have to flee there and there was truly a breakdown in law and order, I estimate a 30-50% chance that my property rights would actually be respected (assuming I could even make it there). And I can guarantee that I would come into the community as a humble supplicant and refugee, not as a leader and member of the local landed gentry, in spite of my status as a 1%er and large land holdings, which would mean NOTHING in that circumstance.

These guys in the New Yorker article? They won’t stand a chance against the locals — anywhere on the globe, their 50 caliber tanks be damned. It’s the old Tom Wolfe “Masters of the Universe” delusion writ large. They don’t know what they don’t know.

You really want to survive? Move to a rural community with a thriving small to medium sized agricultural base. Now. And don’t leave for more than a couple weeks a year (and don’t talk abut where your go to get your uran fix). Learn to garden, can food, and raise small livestock. Be quiet, be humble, join the local Republican party and keep your damned mouth shut at meetings. Make lots of friends by doing useful things that don’t involve your cash stash. Did I mention being humble? Attend the local school’s sports events. Go to a stable conservative church, and at least pretend to believe. Did I mention keeping your mouth shut?

Watch carefully how locals dress and imitate them by buying at the same stores, without trying to add some lumbersexual flair or buying upscale things that you think look similar. Make your local charity giving modest, by local standards if public, and sworn to secrecy if not modest.

Take up hunting and fishing, and learn the local unwritten rules of that game. Learn to field dress and butcher your own deer (it will come in handy when you need to handle the beef or pork you’ve learned to raise.)

In other words, change your life completely and stop being who you are and try to become one of the people who will actually survive by helping each other because they are friends and neighbors.

And here is the most important tip: if you truly learn agricultural self-sufficiency — you will actually be USEFUL to your neighbors, since many of them, for all their other country skills, have lost many of those old arts from decades of shopping in grocery stores whIle they put aall of their efforts into surviving in an economic climate hostile to small farming and ranching.

A wise Orthodox bishop once told me: we all know what to do to save our souls. The question is: do ywe really want to badly enough to actually do it?

Same here: do you care enough about survival to give up your metro life and its urbane comforts? Probably not. I haven’t yet done it myself, and have been willing to gamble on the 50% odds I have accrued through long associated relationships and some very practical skill sets I was raised with and more that I have acquired since leaving home. But the Silicon Valley guys won’t have that 50% chance. Not remotely. Better to stay where they are and just hope it doesn’t happen. They are attempting to buy indulgences — not realizing that these are just as worthless as were the ones sold by the Vatican centuries ago.

Justinian was well on the way to reconquering a large part of the west when colossal natural disasters doomed the attempt. In some alternate universe where some damn-fool volcano did not explode, darkening the skies across the globe, a revived Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople might have ruled much of Europe for centuries more, turning aside even the armies of Islam.

It was the mid – 6th c plague (thought by some historians to have been more devastating than the Black Death) which crippled Byzantium.

He reconquered the Maghreb. He reconquered Italy as well, but had to scorch the Earth to complete the process. Italy and Hispania were during the late 5th and early 6th century passably governed by Gothic kings deferential to Roman culture and tradition (though not fully subscribing to it). The Visigoths eventually disposed of Arianism and adopted the orthodox faith. It’s a passable wager that western civilization would have been better off had Byzantium shored up its eastern flank ‘ere attempting reconquest and left Italy alone.

First of all, I love Antonion Garcia-Martinez’s comment. So glad that he posted it! Second, Rod, this is just wrong: “I believe that the cultural left has a lot to answer for on that front, but it’s also the case that the economic right does too.” The economic right is to blame for the fraying of the founding myth? Are you kidding me? Individualism is an essential part of the American founding myth, yet you blame free market conservatives for undermining our sense of common history and purpose. I point the finger elsewhere on the right — e.g., at people like Michael Hanby, who disparages the American Founders at every turn, and at the Lincoln-hating paleocons who tear down the glorious story of the crusade to end slavery (which was launched by the Abolitionists, who were Ben Oppers of their era). Without the great tradition of American individualism, you would not find critical mass for your Ben Op. Who would join, if Americans weren’t so willing to defy the crowd?

Thanks for your description of NZ. It does sound like a lovely place: kind of like a colder, wetter, more fertile version of Australia (which I visited last year for work and greatly enjoyed).

I’m always struck at the grocery store by how much of the apples, for example, are imported from New Zealand. You guys really are a super-productive agricultural country, which probably means you’re well equipped to survive a global economic crash. And you’re protected by extreme remoteness (it’s interesting that New Zealand seems to have been the last significantly sized landmass to be settled by humans, not until 1000 AD or so).

I’ve wanted to leave America and seek my fortunes elsewhere for a very long time, ever since I graduated college in the early to mid 2000s. Research funding is probably going to dry up under Trump so now I have an additional pressing reason to try to look for future work overseas as well. I suspect that in the next few years I might end up leaving and I probably won’t be the only one.

I read that article, too, and thought that some of these people took the film “Road Warrior” too seriously. Anyone who studied the history of times of war and chaos could tell you that 1) it’s temporary, and 2) people pull together and help each other in times of great stress and need and work day and night to restore civilization. Also, I kept wondering how these people will know exactly when to head for their bunkers. Because another thing that a student of history will tell you is that chaos is insidious; it creeps up on you. Or it takes you completely by surprise and it will be too late to get out. The best place to be in a time of chaos is with lots of other people.

The economic right is to blame for the fraying of the founding myth? Are you kidding me? Individualism is an essential part of the American founding myth, yet you blame free market conservatives for undermining our sense of common history and purpose.

This is why, no matter how much we find to agree on, CatherineNY and I can’t agree on who to vote for, or on Grover Norquist.

There were economic elites at the founding, including merchants like John Hancock, and planters like Pinkney and the more liberal Jefferson. But the huge corporate combines that in the name of “individualism” and “the free market” steam roller the rights, livelihood, and the very air and water of lesser citizens, were not really contemplated in the political language of the day.

People seem to not know anything but what they have seen in movies. If there was a “great crisis,” why wouldn’t one expect it to look like the Spanish Civil War or the Mexican Revolution? During the Russian Revolution, aristocrats went to live in Paris, not a bunker in Siberia!

Actually, no. The first thing the Pilgrim Fathers did before they even got off the boat was sign a compact with each other. At Jamestown it was “every man for himself” for a while at first– and the entire colony nearly starved to death. In the Revolution Ben Franklin advised us “We must all hang together or we shall hang separately”. The Civil War appealed to a string sense or nationalism, or regionalism, on both sides. In no way was it fought for “individualism”. The Labor protesters sang “Solidarity forever”.
Hollywood did create a myth of the Loner Hero, especially in Westerners. But it was exactly that– a myth, and not in the good sense.